Huh?

05.02.13

New Lingerie Company Seeks "MILFs"

True&Co, an online lingerie company that fits bras without actual measurements, says it has reappropriated 'MILF' with a "Mom I'd Like To Fit" campaign. But, Misty White Sidell asks, will it actually work?

Whether or not you’d enjoy being called a MILF, it’s unlikely most women would want to mark their bodies with a temporary tattoo baring those four letters.

But True&Co, an online lingerie startup that somehow fits women for bras without actually measuring them, is sending that to their customers as part of a Mother’s Day sales promotion they’ve quizzically named: “Are you a MILF?.”

For a company whose core clientele consists of post-natal mothers looking for new lingerie, MILF is not in the least bit smutty. No, for them it means: ‘Mom I’d Love to Fit.'

The promotion asks shoppers to submit a photo of their mom to an “online MILF gallery” which will enter them to win a $100 gift certificate. Yes, as in, submit your own mom to a Facebook gallery of MILFs. Jezebel aptly called the campaign “a pretty bad idea…. Anyone at True who actually repeated the phrase ‘online MILF gallery’ out loud in a meeting room should have raised a hand and pointed out to the ad team that, um, maybe this idea wasn’t so great after all.”

But True&Co founder Michelle Lam told The Daily Beast it’s not what you think. “We came up with the phrase [Mother I’d like to Fit] and then came up with [MILF] as we were playing around with the logo,” she says. Lam explains the promotion is “community-building, we are trying to build a conversation,” and is light-years different from “what a movie has made a derogatory term." She continues: "We’ve repurposed it into something positive. We are expressing our sense of humor, just because some frat boys made up an acronym doesn’t mean it should mean one thing in particular.”

A release for the MILF promotion says “we meant the pun and we meant it in good fun. We think there’s nothing objectifying about a woman owning her sexuality. We’d be proud to be considered a MILF (Mom I’d Love to Fit).”

Lam says that the promotion has been getting “a lot of great feedback. We’ve been surprised by the amazing amount of enthusiastic responses we’ve gotten.” And as for those temporary tattoos, which come with every purchase until Mother’s Day, “It’s a way to engage in a conversation with our customers and moms at large. There is a postcard attached to it that says, ‘Hey are you a MILF? Wear this tattoo or pass it on to someone who would enjoy it.’”